c of the Commonwealth, re-enkindle the pure flame of
patriotism, and restore the inspiration of religion. A benefactor indeed
is the thinker who can give us a glimpse of the Divine on rational terms,
satisfy the exigencies of the intelligence without denying the cravings
of the heart, and provide an idealism for the inspiration and guidance of
life.

Perhaps it is not too much to say that the temporal destitution of the
repatriated Jews was a symbol of the religious and ethical decay of the
last century. Protestantism of the orthodox type, which essentially was
and is nothing more than the substitution of a book for a Pope, the
pruning of the tree dogmatical, the lopping off of some of its more
reprehensible excrescences, had visibly failed to meet the necessities of
"the irresistible maturing of the human mind," to quote an expression of
Emerson's. The older Church had prophesied accurately enough that
Lutheranism would turn out but a half-way house to infidelity, and sure
enough it did. Its thorough application of the principle of private
judgment in matters of religion could no more justify the inspiration of
Leviticus than the federal headship of Adam and the dogma of endless
vindictive punishment. Hence Lutheranism necessarily meant the gradual
disintegration of dogma, that is, of all super-rational truth, for every
man "outside the sacred circle of those bound over not to think".

When we remember, in addition to the decay of Protestantism, that Roman
Catholic countries afforded more than sufficient evidence of the
inability of their own religion to meet the increasing needs of the
age--how France, Spain, and Portugal were devastated by the sceptical
disease; how they insisted on and carried the total suppression of the
Jesuit Order, beyond compare the ablest body of men their Church had ever
produced; how the French Revolution was in its inception profoundly
anti-Christian, and in its progress even anti-religious--when, I say, we
call to mind these facts, we are able to appreciate the accuracy of the
statement that, through the maturing of the intelligence of man, the
ancient traditions had lost their hold, not only of Protestant, but of
Catholic, lands. Without leaving for a moment the eighteenth century, I
think we are warranted in stating that the close of the nineteenth
century does not witness a rehabilitation of those traditions. The truth
is more obvious than ever that in the men of to-day,

The